Microservices Security Best Practices

Microservices are transforming application development and replacing traditional monolithic architectures for building and deploying applications.

Organizations that are adopting the microservices architecture face many security challenges. Because the technology is still nascent, a lack of awareness and skill enables bad actors to exploit security loopholes.

Good microservices security implementation offers a great depth of security and places multiple levels of security implementations at each stage of development.

Below are some of the best Practices for Microservices Security:

• Scan dependencies: A dependency exists when one resource or any part of the project or application relies on another. Using third-party code can bring external dependencies into the application. Tools like GitHub’s Dependabot can be used to analyze the source code and identify vulnerable dependencies.
• Use API gateways: As the scale of an application increases, it becomes more difficult to keep track of individual APIs. Using an API gateway makes tracking easier to manage as the API gateway provides a single entry point for all API communication.
• Implement monitoring at the services level: It is appropriate to have security solutions and tools that monitor and protect the application at the service level to ensure security. Some good monitoring tools include Prometheus, Sysdig, Trace, and Sensu.
• Use automation testing tools: Automation is a crucial aspect of implementing security. Misconfigurations cause the most security incidents, so it is important to use automation testing tools. Here are some popular automation testing tools:
  • JMeter and K6 for performance testing
  • Mocha and Jest for integration and unit testing
  • Chaos Monkey for testing resiliency
  • Pact for contract testing
• Have good identity and access control measures: Access management measures should be in place at both the user level and services level. Here are some suggestions for implementing good access control:
  • OpenID for authentication at the user level
  • OAuth and OAuth2 for authorization
  • Use multi-factor authentication
  • Build a distributed firewall
  • Use Mutual Transport Layer Security (mTLS) for mutual authentication between microservices
• Implement network protection solutions: One of the major microservices aspects that often gets neglected is securing the network. Communication between services, accessing applications, building, deployment, and everything uses some kind of network.
• Avoid in-house crypto code: Though encryption is good for security, in-house encryptions are generally error-prone and cause more damage than good. It is advised to use standardized encryption protocols and tools unless there is a high degree of expertise available in cryptography and security.
• If using the cloud, Know your cloud and cluster security.

Conclusion:

Microservices have many remarkable benefits, but with those benefits, the need for security increases. Organizations must prioritize their investment in microservices security. Organizations have to formulate their techniques on an aggregate of the practices noted above.

Following safety excellent practices allows corporations to control their microservices safety successfully.